CSM and FT to be bombarded by Hugo Chavez's supporters

By Aleksander Boyd

London 23.02.06 | The Christian Science Monitor (CSM) and the Financial Times (FT) have published a couple of articles that seem to have rattled the chavista cage at 33 15th Street NW, Suite 932 in Washington, DC. For that reason Eric Wingerter and the rest of the paid propagandists at the Venezuela Information Office (VIO) sent out an email alert yesterday with the heading "Two Negative Media Stories on Venezuela--Your Help is Needed" requesting help in countering negative media coverage. Said help shall be forthcoming, in immediate fashion, from the likes of Mark Weisbrot -probably already writing an 'acute dissection' for CommonDreams, Justin Delacour -who poses as a media expert in FAIR, Greg Wilpert -chief spinmeister at chavista 'intelligentsia' organ Venezuelanalysis, or perhaps a wild card such as Ken Livingstone, Richard Gott or 'intellectual heavyweight' Noam Chomski. This is not the first time, nor will it be the last, that such actions are taken by Chavez's agents. As Vinod brilliantly related in his piece, the support for Castro's mini me is in an ever decreasing curve in Venezuela, so what's left for the regime is to keep on hammering upon the strategy of shooting the messenger/s. Ergo both CSM and FT, but especially Vinod, ought to expect a deluge of letters from 'concerned readers' requesting a more balanced -read propagandistic- editorial line vis-a-vis their financial, political or ideological patron. Fortunately the VIO activities have been meticulously documented by yours truly for the past 20 months. Therefore if concerned parties need to check quickly whether 'affected readers' are writing out of their own volition or rather following a specific mandate, a list of names can be found here. Eric seems to have forgotten to include in his alert the little disclaimer, mandated by law, that states that the joint he works for is funded entirely by the Chavez regime. Considering the nature of recipients of the alert, one must be certain that such an oversight won't be a problem. However the Justice Department authorities should investigate the implications of having an IT expert (Justin Nemmers, registrant of democracyinaction.org quoted below) that, purportedly, knows the mechanics of government's IT networks inside out, 'lending' his services to further the bolivarian revolution cause in the USA. Hugo Chavez is giving significance to the popular premise "the Latinos are taking over."

Earlier this week, two major newspapers ran separate stories extraordinarily critical of the current political scene in Venezuela. While bad coverage of Venezuela in the mainstream media is nothing new, both of these articles are significant for their level of imbalance and the extreme nature of their views. Your help is needed to correct the record. Please take the time to write a quick letter to the editor.

Christian Science Monitor correspondent Vinod Sreeharsha interviews three disaffected Venezuelans who originally voted for President Hugo Chavez and now are dissatisfied with the administration. The interviewees present a laundry-list of "infrastructure" problems and imply that life for Venezuela's poor has declined, rather than improved over the last six years.

The article notes that Chavez's support has been "slipping", but does not mention that approval ratings merely dipped from 70% to 65%. By leaving the numbers out, the article implies that the President does not maintain majority support, and that the four Venezuelans interviewed make up majority opinion.

Neither does the story note the role of the undemocratic forces within the Venezuelan opposition in any "infrastructure" problems the country may have. Remember in the past 4 years alone, the Chavez administration has faced an attempted coup d'etat, a nationwide "strike" of oil executives that crippled the economy, and a recall referendum. The opposition likes to argue that the Chavez administration has not stayed on top of things like bridge maintanence or pothole fixing, yet they haven't given the administration an opportunity to govern without interference.

This story attempts to link Chavez's opposition to U.S. foreign policy with "cold war antics" of the Soviet Union. It singles out President Chavez for hurting relations between the two country, but glosses over the highly aggressive posture the U.S. State Department has had against Venezuela since Chavez was first elected. Remember that the United States continues to fund opposition leaders in Venezuela, some of whom led the 2002 coup d'etat against President Chavez. While the Venezuelan government may lob rhetorical battles against the Bush administration, they have never directly interfered with internal politics in the United States. What's more, characterizing opposition to President Bush's foreign policy is not akin to being "anti-American."

Like the Christian Science Monitor article, this story in the Financial Times does not quote a single pro-Chavez source.

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